5 Villains That Should Appear in 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3'

After 'Out of the Shadows,' who will Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael fight next?

There have been so many iterations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles over the years, that it’s difficult to keep track of all the video games, toys, and animated series that feature Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael fighting their various foes. Add to that the six big-screen feature film adventures of everybody’s favorite anthropomorphic adolescent reptilian ninjas — including the newest, Out of the Shadows, hitting theaters today — and that’s a huge amount of bad guys.

The problem with the Ninja Turtles is that they tend to fight the same villains whenever they make the jump to live-action movies. They faced off against their main antagonist, the Shredder, in the 1990 original; battled him again and a genetically mutated snapping turtle named Tokka and wolf named Rahzar in 1991’s Secret of the Ooze; the third movie was a bit of a wildcard since they fought an evil feudal Japanese daimyo named Lord Norinaga; the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot had them fight a souped-up Michael Bay envisioned Shredder and Foot Clan; while Out of the Shadows doubled down on the cartoon villainy and has Shredder, evil scientist Baxter Stockman, mutated rhinoceros Rocksteady and warthog Bebop, and inter-dimensional talking brain Krang all try to foil the Turtles’ fun.

To be fair, Out of the Shadows is probably the most fun Ninja Turtles movie since Secret of the Ooze, and the script manages to make all five villains jam-packed into the movie work because they all equally serve the plot. The hope is that Out of the Shadows is a hit so itll garner more turtle adventures to come, but the truth is these movies will keep getting churned out as long as they make enough money at the box office. So if and when Leo, Donnie, Raph, and Mikey get their inevitable threequel, who should they fight?

5. Slash

Since Shredder ends up incapacitated and Krang seems to be stuck in Dimension X after the events of Out of the Shadows, the Turtles might have to fight a different kind of villain in the third reboot. The Turtles did some serious soul searching about accepting the fact that they’re essentially gigantic horrendous mutant creatures, so it’d add a fairly interesting dimension to that theme if the villain they went up against was basically a version of themselves.

Slash, the evil mutant robot, who is essentially a bizarro Ninja Turtle, would be great if the screenwriters came up with a plausible way to introduce him. While the Shredder isn’t around to give them orders, Bebop and Rocksteady are only incapacitated at the end of Out of the Shadows, and it makes sense that Karai, the second in command of the Foot Clan, might take some of Baxter’s ooze to create the character that was introduced as Bebop’s mutated pet turtle.

4. Monsterex

We can't wait for the Universal Monsters / Ninja Turtles crossover.

It’s all about cinematic universe synergy these days, and though this might take some impossible corporate wrangling between the Ninja Turtles at Paramount and the Universal Monsters at, well, Universal, to work, the most audacious Turtle villain from the comics might make the most incredibly audacious big-screen villain as well. Monsterex was introduced in 1988-to-1995 Archie Comics series of the Ninja Turtles, and was a two-headed amalgamation of a werewolf, vampire, merman, mummy, and Frankenstein’s monster all into one ridiculous foe.

It’s absurd, and its inclusion in the series would almost certainly mark the end of the reboot series, but god wouldn’t it be amazing to see the normal Hollywood blockbuster ruckus about casting and character design and all that just for this one monstrous character? Cast Michael Shannon as Monstrex and the movie would make billions.

3. Pizza Face

What’s that cliché? Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. How about “keep your favorite foods close but gross mutated anthropomorphic enemy versions of your favorite food closer”? The Turtles are well-known lovers of pizza, so why not have them face off against the food of their choice in the next movie?

There’s actually a couple of different variations on Pizza Face. The character was first introduced in the 1990 toy line as “[Pizzaface](http://turtlepedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pizzaface_(1990_action_figure),” a power hungry chef named Antonio who mutated himself into a crazed pizza-tinged monster that featured a pizza cutter for a leg and a pizza box shield. The toy resembled the more human side of his mutation, but later the 2012 cartoon series featured the villain as “Pizza Face,” with a cheesier design that made him look like a giant talking glop of mozzarella, sauce, and crust. The film series is getting increasingly cartoonish, so a giant pizza monster would fit right in.

2. Mousers

Because you can’t mess with a recipe that works, Shredder and Krang will most likely be back for the third movie in some shape or form. The obvious thing to do is find out what filmmakers could add to make them a threat to the Turtles once again. The answer, to every Ninja Turtles fan out there, is the Mousers.

These little buggers are the product of Baxter Stockman, who was last seen in Out of the Shadows being pulled away by the Foot Clan to be kept in seclusion somewhere, could most likely be tasked with building these bipedal bots to be sent into the New York City sewers to find and kidnap Splinter. The Turtles, without their father, will have to band together to learn how to be brave individuals to get him back while facing this quickly multiplying opponent. Voila, there’s the general idea for your third movie right there.

1. Baxter

The most obvious choice for a villain in the third movie is Baxter himself, played in the first two rebooted movies by Tyler Perry. The brilliant mad scientist of the comics and cartoon went and got his molecules intermingled with a fly after he was thrown through a portal by Krang to his apparent death.

Instead, like a scene out of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, Stockman emerged as a superhuman powered fly creature whose mutation only made him increasingly insane. The character’s scientific ambitions and hubris would possibly spell doom for the Turtles and New York City, but mostly would make for a great on-screen villain.